Sunday, December 30, 2012

Second blog anniversary

Today, it's my blog's second anniversary, so it looks like this is a good time for some reflection.

2012 in a nutshell

Although I have fewer blog posts this year compared to last year (although the difference is not that big), 2012 was in fact an extremely busy/stressful year. First, I had to write my PhD thesis, which was quite a project. Actually, from February up to August nearly all my time was consumed writing it, when I was not sleeping or eating. Besides my thesis, also some publication work had to be done, such as the HotSWUp publication about deploying mutable software components and a journal version of the WASDeTT paper about Disnix.

Although I was very busy, I've tried to keep blogging as much as possible. In the beginning this worked out well, but later this year I had some difficulties posting anything relevant (as may be observed from April 2012 until October 2012).

I also had some depressing moments. One of them was about science in general. One of the things that made me really mad/frustrated were reviewers "complimenting" our papers with: "this is a remarkable piece of engineering" (which implies that it's not science, so the paper will be rejected). I wrote quite a lengthy blog post about this issue, and dived into literature to find an explanation, which I was able to find.

Although I had some depressing/stressful moments, I also published two blog posts at the beginning of this year, about fun projects involving my good old Amiga, with a bit of overlap to my research. Most of the work for these blog posts was already done last year, but I still had to write them down.

After finishing my thesis draft and a short break, my employment contract with the university expired and I had to switch jobs. The process of finding a new job was quite interesting. A few things that I've noticed is that only a few companies have real interest in who you are and what background you have. A lot of them use a standard application procedures, such as capacity tests, and a lot of "standard" interview questions. Most of them also treated me as an undergrad and offered me salaries way lower than my PhD salary.

Furthermore, before I started talking to these companies I considered myself still as somebody who's more like an engineer as a scientist. But when I spoke to them, I've noticed then I'm more "scientific" than I thought. Although these observations, nearly all the applications I did went fine and I have received many job offers. I was rejected one time, probably because that company was looking for somebody "who just wants to program in Java", instead of a critical person like me.

Finally, I was hired by Conference Compass as a Software Architect. Here, I still use some stuff I was working on during research, such as deployment with Nix and related tools. I've produced two blog posts related to my deployment work there -- deployment of mobile apps on Android and iOS devices.

Blog posts

Another interesting observation is the "popularity" of my blog. This year, I think I have attracted 10 times as many visitors compared to last year. Especially in the last two months, I've attracted a lot of readers, thanks to Reddit. At this moment, the top 10 of the most frequently read blog posts is:

On Nix and GNU Guix. Not so long ago, the GNU project had announced GNU Guix, a package manager based on Nix, implementing an internal DSL using GNU Guile, instead of using the Nix expression language, an external DSL. I wanted to give my opinion about it and the blog post has been picked up by the Reddit community, attracting a huge amount of visitors.

An alternative explanation of the Nix package manager. I wrote this blog post, because I had to explain Nix to my new employer. I've used a different explanation style that is language-oriented and I actually find this version a bit better that the explanation recipe I normally use. I've decided to blog about it and it has been picked up by the Reddit community, attracting a lot of readers.

Second computer. This is the blog post about my good ol' Commodore Amiga. It was also in last year's top 10, and it still seems to be very popular. This shows me that there are still a lot of people out there with nostalgic feelings :-).

An evaluation and comparison of GoboLinux. This blog post was also in last year's top 10 in which I compare the deployment properties of NixOS with GoboLinux. This blog has also been reddited some time ago.

Porting software to AmigaOS (unconventional style). This was a random fun experiment in which I combine some nostalgic Amiga feelings with my current research. I did not expect it to be that interesting, but for some reason it has attracted a lot of readers and even a few people who wanted to try the function I have developed.

Software deployment complexity. One year ago, this was my most popular blog post, that's highly related to my research. It still seems to be relevant, fortunately :-).

Software engineering fractions, collaborations and "The System". This was a blog post I wrote this year in a depressing period, but nonetheless, I still think it's very relevant for anyone involved in the software engineering community to read. Some people say that I'm in a good shape when I'm ranting about something.

The Nix package manager. This was my original explanation of the Nix package manager to use the standard explanation recipe. This blog post was also in last year's top 10.

First blog post. Yet another blog post, that was ranked third in my top 10 last year. People still want to know who I am :-).

Some thoughts

As with my last's year reflection about my blog, I have noticed that my blog attracts many more readers than all my scientific papers combined. Another thing that I observed is that writing for my blog is more convenient than writing papers, because I'm not bound to all kinds of restrictions, such as the page limit, topics that are interesting (and are uninteresting), the amount of "greek symbols" that I should use, whether something is engineering or science etc. It feels like a big relief, it's much more fun, attracts more readers and gives me more feedback.

Actually, it seems that this observation is not unique to me and has been noticed quite some time ago already by Edsger Dijkstra, a very famous computer scientist who published most of his contributions through EWDs, manuscripts which he wrote about anything he wanted. In EWD1000 titled: 'Twenty-eight years', he reflected over his previous 28 research years and one of the interesting things he wrote in that manuscript is:

"If there is one "scientific" discovery I am proud of, it is the discovery of the habit of writing without publication in mind. I experience it as a liberating habit: without it, doing the work becomes one thing and writing it down becomes another one, which is often viewed as an unpleasant burden. When working and writing have merged, that burden has been taken away."

Most manuscripts of him after 1974 were hand-written and he never owned a computer. Because of that people consider him old fashioned. But on the other hand, he was way ahead of his time. In fact, Dijkstra's way of working could be considered an early form of blogging using a pen+paper+photocopier instead of a computer+internet.

I also think that writing more frequently and distributing your findings more often offers much more value. Quite frequently people give the expression that publishing a paper goes like this:

You reach your goal without any obstacles. But in reality it goes more like this:

You will reach many obstacles and you may not even fully reach your goal, or only under special circumstances. These obstacles are also interesting to know about, as well as how to practically implement certain aspects. It gives you better feedback, helps to "structure your mind" and to better reach your audience. Most researchers refrain from doing that.

And another thing is, if you really want any research work to succeed, you much also reach non-researchers. For this practical aspects as well as usable software is important. That's probably a big reason why this blog attract quite some readers.

Concluding remarks

In this blog post I've reflect over 2012 and it seems that it's still worth having this blog. Next year, there is more interesting stuff to come. The final thing I'd like to say is: